Africa-Press – Angola. David Francisco de Lemos died, due to illness, on the 27th of May. When his family, on the 1st of the current month, together with the employees of the Morgue Central de Luanda, went to open the drawer to prepare the body, they found a different deceased.
The body of David Francisco Lemos was deposited by the family, in drawer 125. When they arrived there, the relatives found another body, with slight appearances of the deceased and even with the same name.
Madalena Francisco de Lemos, sister of the deceased, explains that everything happened when, on Thursday the 1st, the day of her brother’s funeral, she and other family members went to the morgue of Maria Pia, known as Central de Luanda, with the intention of prepare the body for the funeral, having verified, on the spot, that the deceased had disappeared.
“My brother was deposited in drawer number 125 and the other body in drawer 126, but on the day of the funeral my brother’s body was not in the same drawer where he had been placed. chamber five, to see if it was there,” he said.
He says that they were not successful, because there was another body, which was very similar to that of his brother. “He was in drawer 126, we saw his name and it was identical. At first I thought it was him too, but the difference between the two was that the other dead man didn’t die with his mouth open and he didn’t have gaps in his teeth like the one my brother,” he said.
strikethrough names
Madalena Lemos informed that in the list of registers, the name of the other corpse was erased, and the seal that was on her brother was found in another body.
“It was then that the mortuary staff declared that our body was buried by another family. All this happened because the other family paid to bathe their loved one. this exchange of bodies”, he said.
Madalena Lemos also made it known that at the moment the corpse was declared missing, with the help of the Criminal Investigation Services (SIC) and the morgue management, it was possible to find the family that took the body by mistake.
He explained that the family was found, but his brother had already been buried the day before, on Wednesday, May 31st. The family requested that their brother’s body be exhumed so that they could give their loved one a dignified funeral.
The authorities, together with the two families, went to the Benfica cemetery, where the exhumation was carried out at 5 pm on the 1st. body, to be buried the next day.
He says that when his loved one was exhumed, the body left without any state of decomposition and everything was done so that, the following day, his brother’s remains were buried in the Camama cemetery.
Madalena is sad and dissatisfied with the work done by Morgue Central de Luanda.
“We are not the only family to go through this situation. It is sad when we are faced with situations of this nature. It was horrible to experience what we went through with my brother’s body. He was a senior officer of the National Police and we were unable to provide him with the proper tribute because of this sad situation”. Until the moment of our report, the management of the morgue had not pronounced on the matter. “The only thing they did for us was to receive my brother’s body again so that it could be prepared and preserved there. They didn’t have the courtesy to apologize”, he lamented.
According to Madalena, the injured family is saddened by the posture of the management of the Morgue Central de Luanda, who are asked to be more serious in their work with the public, so that cases of this nature do not happen again to other families.
They also ask the Angolan Government to pay greater attention to the morgues in Luanda, “especially that of Maria Pia, so that irregularities and poor work on the part of that institution are combated”, he added.
Relatives of the deceased upset with new rules for providing services
The queue of hearses was huge, reaching the Medium Health Institute of Luanda “IMSL”. A traffic officer regulated the entry and exit of vehicles. Inside, the scene was frightening. More than 25 cars were waiting, while the deceased were prepared by family members, now reduced to five people. Outside, other family members were waiting.
The agitation of family members, prevented from entering the mortuary by police agents, is great. The climate of dissatisfaction is notorious, as there are new procedures for accessing the morgue. These procedures were adopted to avoid floods and disorder when washing and preparing bodies for wakes and later burials.
Manuel José awaits the departure of his brother who died of a prolonged illness. He regrets the way corpses are treated. He denounced what he had to do to preserve the body of his loved one. It was still dawn when he and other family members left the house. They had the intention of, until 8 am, to be at home to hold the wake. But the hearse took a long time to arrive, which was a concern.
“The coffin didn’t arrive, the driver didn’t answer the phone and when he answered he explained that the car had problems and had to change it for another one in better condition”, explains Manuel José. Two days before, Manuel José had to attend the morgue, in the mornings, to make sure that his brother’s body was being well preserved, despite paying the necessary emolument to the morgue to guarantee the service.” So that the body would not be moved from one drawer to another, without good refrigeration, I was obliged to give a monetary gratuity to one of the employees. This is our reality, unfortunately. If you want a job well done, you have to pay, even in this hour of pain. We’re used to it, it’s not the first time we’ve come here and we’ve done it this way”, says Manuel José.
When they finished preparing the body of Manuel’s brother, they placed the coffin in the hearse and the relatives left for the Cassequel neighborhood, in the house where the death was. The burial was scheduled for the Benfica cemetery.
Poorly preserved bodies and slow service
With gloves on his hands, after washing his uncle’s body, Mário Francisco said that five months ago they had died, when a cousin died, the victim of a car being run over in Mutamba. After being taken to the Central Morgue, the body was placed in a drawer, but the next day they found it elsewhere and on the date of the funeral it was already in a pitiful condition.
” The poor conservation was due to the fact that the mortuary employees had changed the body from the drawer it was in to another one that was not in good refrigeration conditions. The result was that we had to have the wake in a hurry. Benfica, the coffin went straight into the hole…”, laments Mário Francisco. Every day there are crowds of people at the time of receiving the document for the morgue. There is a slowness in this process, which leaves users annoyed and wanting to get out of that place that causes them the most pain.
We see the sad and desolate faces of some, while others show courage and still manage to console those who cannot contain their emotions and burst into tears. In this climate, a photo placed on one of the hearses reads: “Goodbye, mother Lourdes”.
Wednesdays at the “casa dos frescoes”
In the taxi, on the way to this report, I hear a passenger say: “I’ll stay at the casa dos frescoes”, he warned the conductor who replied: “all right”. Intrigued, like me, another The passenger asked where, in the area after the Zamba 2 bridge, the fresco house was located.As soon as the car stopped, he realized that it was the Morgue Central de Luanda, located in the Josina Machel Hospital, formerly Maria Pia.
Mauro Manuel lives in the Benfica neighborhood and works at Ingombota. Every day, he leaves home at 5:30 am to avoid the traffic jam on the Samba road. He noticed that, after crossing the Zamba 2 bridge, there was almost always a slight traffic jam. Initially, he thought it was because of the treadmill. “As this scenario always happened on Wednesdays, sometimes the route was diverted to Nova Marginal”, he said.
By distraction, on a Wednesday, Mauro Manuel, when he realized the direction he was taking, was already on top of the bridge. He noticed a huge line of hearses heading towards the Morgue Central de Luanda and, only then, did he understand the reason for the traffic jam in that area and on that day of the week.
“Unfortunately, I noticed that Wednesdays are the day of the week when there are a lot of funerals, which is why the morgue registers a huge flow of people. On the other hand, there are families that only have the funeral in the middle of the week and it seems that always falls on the same day, Wednesday”, he underlined.
This finding is shared by other motorists who, on a daily basis, drive on the Samba road. For everyone, the wisest thing is to avoid getting stuck in traffic. The solution is to look for other more fluid routes.
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